


Heart's Blight

by Jadelyn



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Caretaking, Emotionally Constipated Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Loves Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Whump, Hanahaki Disease, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Immortal Jaskier | Dandelion, M/M, Minor Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Miscommunication, Multi, Mutual Pining, Requited Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28351869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadelyn/pseuds/Jadelyn
Summary: They say Heart's Blight is caused by love given no outlet. That love is meant to flow, not stagnate, and Heart's Blight is what comes of love forced to stand still. The more poetic say that Heart's Blight is caused by grief for one still living. And in a way they're correct, too, for what is grief but love with nowhere left to go?Witchers are not meant to know either love or grief, so how is it then that a witcher, of all people, could develop Heart's Blight?  And who is his heart really grieving?
Relationships: Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 41
Kudos: 296
Collections: Bards of Geraskier Secret Santa 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [novoid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/novoid/gifts).



> For the BOG Secret Santa 2020 - Nova I herd u liek ~~mudkips~~ hanahaki so here we goooo

It begins a month after Rinde. Geralt is listening to Jaskier performing yet another ridiculous ballad when he feels an odd catch in his throat as he takes a shallow breath, trying to block out as much of the stench of commingled humanity as possible. It’s just about gotten bad enough that he’s going to give up and go upstairs where at least the quite literal unwashed masses are held at bay by a door or two, even though he knows Jaskier will be unhappy about Geralt not staying for his whole performance.

He never used to stay for the whole thing, even though it made Jaskier unhappy, but since the djinn guilt has compelled Geralt to try to make up for it as best he can. He stays in the tavern while Jaskier sings, he’s stopped making cutting comments about his singing, he tries not to snap at Jaskier even when he’s doing that composing thing while they travel where he repeats tiny variations on a single line or phrase or melody over and over until Geralt feels as though his head will explode if he has to listen to it one more time. His short-temperedness and nastiness about Jaskier’s voice nearly wound up silencing it permanently; it’s the least he can do, now, to try to silently apologize and make sure Jaskier knows he didn’t actually want it gone.

But Jaskier has just switched from his more upbeat songs and wildly exaggerated tales of heroic deeds to ballads of courtly love and star-cross’d lovers, and between the rising stink of too many people in too small a space and the odd, new melancholia that tugs at his ribs during these songs lately, Geralt thinks it might be a good time to make himself scarce.

And that’s when the breath catches in his throat, roughened around some kind of obstruction. He clears his throat once, twice. On the third time, the feeling goes away. He catalogs it under passing oddities, maybe having inhaled some smoke or sawdust or…who the fuck knows what, in that dim, smoky tavern, and puts it out of his mind as he slips away up to their room.

* * *

It keeps happening. Not often, but perhaps once every few days he’ll feel that odd catch and need to clear his throat a few times before it goes away. There doesn’t seem to be all that much pattern to when it happens. Sometimes it’s as it was the first time, during Jaskier’s performances. Sometimes it’s when they’re just sitting around a fire of an evening, or on the road. Once during a hunt, though thankfully it doesn’t slow him down badly enough to be dangerous. Just enough to leave him shaken and wondering if there’s something really going on that he ought to look into.

But then he goes back to camp, and Jaskier jumps up and comes at him with hands outstretched, eyes scanning over him for evidence of injuries. Geralt lets himself be moved about and sat down and fussed over, and doesn’t think about that feeling again.

* * *

He sees Yennefer again in the fall, just before he sets off alone to return to Kaer Morhen for the winter. They fall into each other with a fervor that borders on violence, and the intensity of the craving she ignites in him could almost be frightening, if not for the equally intense pleasure that comes of sating it.

She’s gone the next morning, when he wakes, and he tries to convince himself that he doesn’t mind. Later that day, he bids Jaskier farewell and turns Roach’s nose toward the nearest thing he has to a home. He spends all afternoon trying to rattle loose the feeling of obstruction until his throat is nearly raw, and he doesn’t sleep that night for the itching feeling it leaves behind.

* * *

It grows worse over the winter. Geralt learns how to suppress the urge until he's alone, so the others won't ask questions. He raids the greenhouse and experiments with tinctures until he works out a recipe that helps suppress the urge to cough and ease the ache in his throat that results when he finally gives in and clears his throat enough to make the obstructed feeling pass.

It's hardest to hide from Eskel, of course. They're usually inseparable over the winter, and Eskel is more closely attuned to Geralt's mood and behavior than anyone else. But he manages, somehow, though Eskel has a furrow of concern etching between his eyes when they part come spring. Geralt knows he hasn't gained the usual winter-weight that sees them through the early parts of spring when contracts tend to be leaner, and Eskel is worrying. He always does.

All Geralt can do is hold him tightly in their final embrace of the season, and put every ounce of sincerity into his promise to see him again come next winter. It's a promise that's kept him alive several times over, knowing he can't break that promise to his…whatever Eskel is to him. It's not something they've ever put into words, neither before they fell into bed together as teenagers nor in all the long years since. _Lover_ doesn't seem a strong enough word to encompass it all. All Geralt knows is that Eskel is part of him in a way that goes beyond descriptive terms.

So he holds him, and kisses him one more time, and promises to see him again before the snows.

Geralt doesn't look back when he mounts up and rides away.

* * *

By fall the catch in his throat and the resulting cough have become as much a part of him as the sword-calluses across his palm. It's not as bad as it was over the winter, but it's a constant in his life now. He's gotten quite adept at hiding it, too, despite Jaskier's constant presence and tendency to stick his nose into every aspect of Geralt's business.

He meets up with Yenn once or twice a season. It's always the same: they clash like a tidal wave against a cliff, fall into bed together, and Geralt wakes in the morning alone. The catch in his throat is always worse for a day or two afterward. Geralt finds himself grateful for the way Jaskier always makes himself scarce when Yenn shows up, the fact that he goes off and sulks for anywhere from a few days to a week or more before reattaching himself to the witcher's side. It makes it much easier to hide, as the worst of it always subsides by the time Jaskier comes back.

* * *

Only it grows even worse over the winter again. Geralt can no longer get by with clearing his throat once or twice to shake the feeling loose. There are actual coughing fits, now.

To keep the others from noticing he forces his spasming lungs to stillness in their presence, thanking his mutations and training for the deliberate muscular control they've granted him. He uses that to tighten his diaphragm til it feels like a band of iron pinning his lungs against his spine. He learns to tolerate the feeling of smothering and the inability to draw a full breath that results from it until he can take himself off to the far wall of the keep or head down to the armory, putting enough distance between himself and the others that he can let go of that iron control. When he finally does, all he can do is give himself over to the cough that demands his surrender and ravages his throat until he feels scraped raw.

It's more often, too. The first winter he'd been fine as long as he could clear the obstruction once a day or so. Now, he has to find excuses to get away twice, sometimes three times in a day, in order to let it run its course.

Geralt gains even less weight this year than the year before, and he knows Eskel suspects something is wrong. The other witcher won't be satisfied with Geralt's avoidance much longer. And Geralt considers telling him, even. He didn't want to worry him, or have anyone pestering him about it, but this thing seems determined to hang on, so maybe he should swallow his pride and ask for help.

He thinks about it, until the day he sees the seeds.

The coughing fit is particularly bad this time. Geralt winds up doubled over, hands braced on his thighs, feeling the cough rattle loose what feels like every last speck of phlegm in his chest. When it's over, Geralt turns to spit the offending material onto the icy flagstones, grimacing.

But what he coughs up isn't just the usual bodily fluids. There's something solid - several somethings, in fact.

Seeds. Plant seeds, though he doesn't recognize them, couldn't begin to guess what sort of plant would grow from them. Why the fuck was he coughing up seeds…?

Geralt shudders, hard. _No. Absolutely not. It can't be._

The old 'witchers don't feel' canard is bullshit, mostly just a convenient excuse for humans to feel justified in their cruelty toward them. They do feel. But not…not like that. Witchers don't feel love, not that kind of love, and sure as fuck not strongly or deeply enough to wind up with Heart's Blight because of it.

_Geralt_ , specifically, doesn't love like that. Won't let himself. Eskel excepted, of course, but that's…different. Not repressed, the way that gives rise to Heart's Blight. So how the fuck - why the fuck…

_It started after Rinde._

Geralt stiffens as though he's been slapped. With a muttered curse, he spins on his heel and all but flees back to the keep.

* * *

The third winter is when the first petal appears.

Geralt stares down at the petal in his hand, swallowing hard. He doesn't even recognize it. It's perhaps the size of the last joint of one of his fingers, a rich blue-violet hue, with one side covered in tiny silky hairs that fairly glow when held up to the light. He wonders, idly, what the whole flower looks like. If he'll recognize it then, near the end.

He narrowly avoids being found out that winter. Half a dozen times he finds himself unable to fully control the coughing, able only to hide the resulting petals and try to pass it off as caused by ordinary irritants - a drink gone down wrong, a wisp of smoke inhaled. He sees the way Eskel watches him despite his excuses and knows he can't put the other witcher off the truth much longer.

Which is why, the next autumn when he ordinarily turns Roach's nose toward the mountains, he finds a mage instead and pays for an enchanted message-bird to take a note up to the keep in his stead.

Am alive, but won't make it to the keep in time. Will winter elsewhere. Take care. -G

There isn't much else he can say. He can't let Eskel spend the winter fearing the worst, but the Blight is too far advanced to hide from another witcher for months on end in such close quarters. So he finds an abandoned shack in the woods somewhere in Aedirn, clumsily builds a second shelter for Roach, and spends the winter alone save for infrequent trips to a nearby village for provisions. His hoarded coin is enough to get them through to spring, barely.

The Blight worsens further, of course. It always does, during those lonely months away from even the meager affections he can glean from his all-too-brief trysts with Yenn. By winter's end Geralt is plagued with deep, hacking coughs several times a day, each time producing one or two petals. He has little appetite, which is more boon than bane with how scarce his supplies are. He can feel his own ribs lurking beneath lean muscle if he presses.

Eskel would be appalled to see him like this. So would Jaskier, for that matter.

Would Yenn even care?

* * *

Jaskier is, indeed, appalled by Geralt's condition when their paths cross that spring.

"What in Melitele's sweet name happened to you? Geralt, you look like you've wasted half away!" Nimble fingers help divest him of his armor, then his clothes, and for once he's too tired to argue that he doesn't need this kind of coddling. He goes along with Jaskier's prodding, sinking into the hot bath with a sigh. Warmed-over snow gets the job done, but it lacks the hedonistic pleasure of a proper bath.

"Seriously, Geralt," Jaskier says once he's in the tub, "what happened? Are you all right?"

"Fine," Geralt grunts, muffling the word with hot water splashed over his face. "Wintered alone, didn't make it to the keep this year."

There's a brief silence. Then Jaskier says, in a hesitant voice entirely unlike the brash cheerfulness Geralt is so accustomed to from him, "You could always…come winter with me in Oxenfurt, if that happens. I'd be pleased to share my lodgings with you." There's another silence, and then he adds, even quieter, "You needn't tough it out alone."

For a brief, glorious moment the constriction in Geralt's lungs eases. But that in and of itself serves as a sharp reminder of why he wintered alone this year, and will do so again next year, and the year after, for as many winters as he has left before the Blight consumes his final breath. Jaskier’s eyes are keen, and despite his carefree persona he notices things and keeps his own counsel; Geralt would have no chance of hiding it from him, any more than from Eskel.

So instead of accepting or even politely demurring, Geralt snarls. "In case you've forgotten, Jaskier, I'm a witcher. My kind are meant to be alone."

He doesn't hear Jaskier's reply. A coughing fit siezes him and crushes his ribcage in its unyielding grip. Geralt doubles over with the force of it, barely keeping his face above the surface of the bathwater. It lasts long enough that by the time he can draw breath again his vision is speckled with black.

Half a dozen of those softly-furred blue-purple petals float innocently on the surface of the water, a mocking parody of the flowers Jaskier likes to scatter in the bath sometimes. Geralt stares down at them, feeling numb.

And then Jaskier's hand leaves his shoulder where the bard had been helping to brace him against the force of the spasms, reaching down to pluck one from the water. "Geralt?" Jaskier’s voice is shaking slightly. "What…what is this? Where did these come from?"

Geralt closes his eyes for a moment, already hating himself for what he's about to do.

Jaskier looks up from the petal and meets his eyes.

Geralt's hand forms the sign for axii and he watches, feeling sick, as Jaskier's eyes go blank and the question dies unuttered on his tongue.

"There's nothing wrong with me aside from a hard winter," Geralt tells him. "You witnessed nothing out of the ordinary - no coughing, no flower petals."

Slowly Jaskier nods. "Nothing," he echoes obediently.

"Go," Geralt says gently. "I'll meet you downstairs."

He finishes his bath alone, as he's meant to be.

* * *

_Why not just tell them, let them help?_

The question drifts through Geralt's mind once in a while, usually sounding suspiciously like Jaskier's voice.

But if he does, they will insist on caring for him. They will demand to know the source of the Blight. They will try to badger him into going to her, sharing his love for her, in order to break the Blight.

He can't do that. He _won't_ do that.

He's already burdened Yenn with his presence, bound by that fucking djinn. He won't try to burden her with his feelings, as well. She won't want them. She wants power, and control, and to be the center upon which the world turns. She wants everything. The stunted and fumbling love of a scarred and broken mutant has no place in her grand designs.

And that being the case, what could the others do but watch him deteriorate, knowing the end is coming? He would spare them that slow torment. Let them grieve when he dies, if they wish, but only then, sparing them all the frustration of his decline and his refusal to try to cure it.

He's meant to be alone. Geralt clings to that thought with almost desperate fervor, taking comfort in the knowledge that this is the way it must be.

The petals continue to come.

* * *

He stays away again for the fifth winter. He returns to the shack in Aedirn again, and suffers through an even leaner season than the one before. His coin purse is lighter than it had been at the start of the last winter - the Blight has begun slowing him, often distracting him at the worst possible moment during a hunt, and he's had to grow chary of taking contracts. It's enough to see Roach fed through til spring, but there's scant coin left for supplies for himself.

It's all right, though. He has little appetite anyway. Full flowers have begun to come, now, and they leave his throat scraped raw enough that swallowing solid food is a torment. Broth and thin gruel is enough to subsist on for a season. In between coughing fits he escapes into meditation to flee the insistent gnawing of hunger and the sharp pangs of loneliness and guilt, spending as much of the season insensate as he can manage.

The flowers that fall from his lips are pretty, but still nothing he recognizes. Half a dozen of those pointed blue-violet petals come together to form a bell shape around a bright cluster of yellow fronds, and it's lovely, but he has no idea what flower it is. Not that it would change anything if he knew, but he can't help but be curious why the Blight manifested this flower to represent Yenn, rather than the obvious lilacs.

He takes the full flowers for the sign they are, though. He's survived this thing, this Heart's Blight, for five years, which is far longer than most are granted with this affliction. But the presence of full flowers means it's advancing to the final stage; he likely won't survive more than another year or so.

Ah, well. It's not like witchers get to retire, anyway.

* * *

Geralt has avoided Jaskier since the incident with the bath, not wanting to axii him again and knowing that he would have to, each time the bard noticed. But if this is to be his final year…

He gives in to weakness and selfishness and travels to Oxenfurt as soon as the world begins to thaw.

Geralt leans against the corridor wall with studied casualness as he waits for Professor Pankratz, as he's heard Jaskier called, to finish his final lecture of the term. He garners a few curious looks but is left alone for the most part; a boon of being among the educated rather than the ignorant and superstitious.

Or perhaps it's because Jaskier has spread his songs and stories here in greater concentration than anywhere else, smoothing Geralt's way for him as he so often does. Whatever the reason, it's nice not being instantly treated as a threat for once.

Jaskier comes out of the lecture hall on the heels of several dozen students, looking tired and preoccupied. And then he looks up from the papers in his hands and sees Geralt standing there waiting for him, and he lights up brighter than a midsummer bonfire.

"Geralt!" he cries, coming up and flinging his arms around Geralt's shoulders in a hard, squeezing hug. "I've missed you, you big oaf. Barely saw you last year, and then the winter of course, but…"

Jaskier eases back and looks at Geralt, really looks. A cloud of unease crosses his features, dims the blazing-bright core of him for a moment. "Are you all right?" he asks carefully. "You look - well, if I'm honest, you look even worse than when I saw you last spring, and I thought that was bad. What's wrong?"

Geralt shakes his head. "Another hard winter, that's all. Got snowed in up in Poviss, couldn't go anywhere - neither to the keep nor back down here. I'll be fine."

When, he wonders, did it get so easy to lie to Jaskier?

The clouds clear a little at that. "That sounds awful, I'm sorry," Jaskier murmurs. "But you're here now, that's what matters. Come, I'll have food and a bath sent to my rooms for you." He doesn't wait for an answer before latching onto Geralt's arm and hauling him along down the corridor toward the faculty wing.

Geralt still doesn't have much of an appetite, but he makes an effort for Jaskier's sake. The more he can cover up the situation by behaving normally, the less he'll have to rely on twisting his friend's mind to keep the secret.

"We don't have to leave right away," Jaskier offers, sipping his wine and watching Geralt carefully. "We could stay here a little longer, let you get some proper rest and food in you before going back out."

It's a tempting thought, but the Blight will be hard enough to hide out on the Path, much less in shared rooms like this. On the road it's easy enough, when a coughing fit threatens, to slip away into the forest on some pretense of hunting or investigating some sound; he has no such excuses here.

So Geralt shakes his head. "No," he says, but he says it more gently than he might otherwise. "I've spent the whole winter stuck in one place, I'm ready to be moving on again."

"All right, then. I'll wrap up my obligations here and we can be on our way tomorrow."

But the oddly searching look Jaskier gives him lingers like a brand across the backs of his eyelids as he tries to sleep that night. The bard knows something is wrong, Geralt is certain of that. He can only hope to deflect for so long before he has to resort to axii to keep Jaskier's concern at bay.

He falls asleep vowing to savor these scant days of peace he has left, for as long as he can keep them.

* * *

Geralt starts when Borch offers to show him "what you've been missing." Does the old man know, somehow?

And then what he's been missing walks into the room, and he forgets about all the rest of it. He'd do far worse than hike up a mountain after a dragon, for the chance to spend whole days in her company.

Especially now, so close to the end.

* * *

He tries to save Borch and the Zerrikanians. He fails.

"We could head to the coast," Jaskier offers. "Get away for awhile."

_I don't have awhile left,_ Geralt thinks, but doesn't say anything.

"Sounds like something Borch would say, doesn't it? Life is too short. Do what pleases you, while you can."

It feels like a knife directly to the heart. His life has been both too long, and now too short, and what pleases him is beyond his reach. _While you can,_ he thinks. This will probably be the last time he sees Yenn, if his guess about the progression of the Blight holds true.

He can't confess his love to her. He won't burden her with that. But perhaps the Blight could be satisfied with something a little less?

So Geralt goes to her tent that night. "I came for you," he says, willing the Blight to find this enough of an offering to appease the illness. They talk around it, carefully, but he thinks perhaps she has grown to feel genuine affection for him outside the bed.

_Let it be enough,_ he begs the Blight, as though it were a being capable of hearing him.

"You're important to me," he tells her.

His breath comes no easier.

Not enough, then. _Oh, well._ He sleeps, lulled by her scent one last time.

* * *

"He already has." She stares at him a moment longer, eyes hard and cold as amethyst stones despite the tears welling in them, before whirling and storming away. He can't breathe, but he's not sure if it's the shock and hurt of losing her or the Blight in his lungs that steals his breath. Perhaps both.

Borch leaves, too, and then Jaskier is there, as he's always there, trying to help, trying to get closer.

Hurt and fury and a sudden desperate panic that if Jaskier stays there's no way Geralt will be able to continue hiding this Blight all merge into a single white-hot instant, and he turns the full force of it on the bard. He's scarcely aware of the words that pour from his lips, only that they burn as much as the blossoms he knows will soon follow, but he sees the broken look on Jaskier's face and knows that whatever he's said, he scored a terrible blow.

Through sheer force of will Geralt manages to hold back until he hears Jaskier's footsteps fade and judges him far enough away not to hear before giving in to the Blight. The paroxysm of coughing doubles him over, steals away what little breath he has left. He winds up on his knees, doubled over and gagging on the profusion of blossoms that spill forth.

He welcomes the darkness when it drags him under.

* * *

Geralt wakes, unexpectedly and rather unfortunately, some hours later. Periwinkle flowers surround him in soft, fuzzy drifts. He can taste blood in the back of his throat when he breathes. But he's still alive.

He makes his slow way back down the mountain and heads east. Fits of coughing take him several times a day, now, flowers and leaves and bits of stem tumbling out of his throat. His breathing has taken on a permanent wheezing edge, no matter how many blossoms he tears loose with the violent convulsions of each coughing fit. It’s not suffocating him yet - he gets enough air with each breath still, enough at least for riding and walking though he wouldn’t dare try to take contracts or fight anything right now - but he’s growing weaker from the lack of food, unable to eat for the pain in his abraded throat.

He sips a little water when he can and keeps going, relying on dogged determination alone to see him through. His time is nearly up, he knows, and he wants to see his family one last time. Wants to see Eskel once more, bid him farewell, leave him with the gift of that closure at least.

It takes every last bit of his failing strength to make it up the Killer to reach the keep, and he almost doesn't make it. Geralt is nearly within sight of the ancient stone walls when he falls and finds himself too weak to rise again. He lies on the cold gravel as Roach whickers and noses at him worriedly. He pats her muzzle, then pushes her gently away, wheezing out something that's meant to be goodbye. There's nothing she can do now, but she knows the route from here. They'll take care of her. He knows they will.

Hoofbeats ring out, fading into silence. Another spasm shakes him, and he curls into himself, choking on the blossoms that surge forth from his lungs. It's starting to snow; he watches the tiny crystals alight on the soft fuzz of the petals. This will be the storm that closes the pass for the winter, he thinks. He almost made it. At least he'll be near enough that they can retrieve his body come spring.

But suddenly there are hands on him, rubbing his back and soothing him through another hacking cough, and a familiar scent reaches his nostrils. He struggles to turn his head and look. "Esk-?"

"Don't try to talk," Eskel says, voice thick with some emotion Geralt can't quite parse. "Gotta get you back to the keep before the storm really sets in." With that Geralt feels himself lifted and moved, careful yet swift.

Eskel has him. He can trust Eskel to take care of everything. Comforted in that knowledge, he lets unconsciousness claim him.


	2. Chapter 2

It's another coughing fit that draws him back into the world of the living. Only this time he's warm and safe, with a broad, familiar hand moving over his back as the spasms wrack his body. It's nice, even though it doesn't really lessen the pain any.

That same hand grips his shoulder and helps ease him back up to sitting when the fit passes, and Geralt suddenly realizes where he is. His own bed, in his own room, in Kaer Morhen. A tidy fire burns in the hearth, silhouetting Eskel where he sits on the edge of the bed. Geralt leans back against the familiar shape of his headboard and closes his eyes.

“So this is why you’ve stayed away, these past few years.” Eskel’s voice is rough and there’s hurt in his scent.

Geralt nods without opening his eyes. “Didn’t want to worry everyone. Nothing to be done, no need to fuss, but -” he cracks an eyelid slightly, “- you’d have tried to fuss anyway. Figured I’d spare us all that.” His voice is hoarse and he’s still tasting blood. Speaking hurts.

“Spare us,” Eskel repeats flatly. “You think vanishing for three years is sparing us anything?”

Geralt drags both eyes open this time. “Didn’t vanish. Sent messages.”

“That’s not the same and you know it,” Eskel chides him. “Whatever. More importantly, Geralt - what happened?”

He shrugs. “Heart’s Blight.”

There’s a slow huff of air as Eskel fights to keep his temper under control. “No fucking shit, Geralt. I could figure out that much on my own. I mean - who’s it for? Why haven’t you done anything about it? Why would you let it get this bad?” A rare thread of tension laces through Eskel’s normally steady voice.

“Yennefer,” Geralt says, chest aching in a way that has nothing to do with the Blight.

“The sorceress you met, the one with the djinn?” Geralt nods. “All right, so…why haven’t you told her?” Eskel sounds half frustrated and half afraid. “Heart’s Blight doesn’t have to be fatal, even if the other person doesn’t love you - you just have to be honest with them about how you feel and stop repressing it. Yeah, yeah - I know how you feel about emotional conversations,” he adds dryly. “But if it’s that or die? Seems like an easy choice to me.”

“The djinn,” Geralt says, by way of explanation. “Already bound her destiny. Won’t try to bind her heart, too.”

Eskel takes a long, slow breath. Then another. He stands and walks to the window, staring blankly out into the swirling snow. Finally he says, so quietly that it’s only witcher hearing that lets Geralt catch it, “And for that, you’d let yourself die? Just so that you don’t risk her feeling pressured or trapped further? You’d rather die and leave us - leave me behind.”

“Esk-”

Before Geralt can say anything else, Eskel whirls and stalks out, slamming the heavy oak door behind him.

* * *

Lambert will barely speak to him, and when he does it’s sharp and angry, a bitter undertone of fear and loss in his scent. Vesemir is quieter in his unhappiness, as is his wont, but Geralt can hear the hints of frustration in his voice.

Eskel is the worst, veering between solicitous care and angrily pushing him away. Geralt understands it, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less. He tries to make him understand - he already bound and burdened Yenn, and he refuses to do so any further, even at the cost of his own life. It doesn’t seem to help.

Over the weeks Geralt continues to decline, though slower now. The warmth and shelter helps, as do the rich broths that they make for him - the closest to food his abraded throat can tolerate. But even as he improves in one way, he deteriorates in another. The wheezing has become noticeably worse, and Geralt no longer feels like he’s able to draw a full-enough breath. He feels vaguely oxygen-starved all the time, now.

Eskel drags the story of the dragon hunt out of him a little at a time. Geralt tells him of his conversation with Yenn the night before it all fell apart, how he tried to tell her he loved her without saying the words, how it wasn’t enough. How Borch exposed the true nature of his wish, and Yenn’s reaction to the revelation, which only confirmed that professing his love outright the night before would’ve been a mistake. Throughout it he maintains that this is how it must be, even as his heart twists at the hurt that comes over Eskel’s scarred features when he listens to Geralt's labored breath straggling in and out of his flower-bound lungs.

* * *

In all their conversations he leaves out the talk with Jaskier after the incident on the shortcut bridge, and the way he turned on him after Yenn left. He casually alludes to a disagreement with the bard, but brushes it aside in favor of focusing on the argument with Yenn, since that’s the thing that’s killing him.

If he’s honest, it’s mostly because he doesn’t want to talk about what happened with Jaskier - sick guilt and dread curls in his gut whenever he so much as thinks of it, the churning of his stomach setting off fresh paroxysms of coughing and drifts of fuzzy blue-violet flowers accumulating on the bed around him. With Yenn, at least, it was an even fight, blows traded, barbs given and received on both sides. With Jaskier…

_Right. I’ll, uh…I’ll get the story from the others. See you around, Geralt._

No. He can’t bear to admit what he did to Jaskier, scathing verbal strikes utterly unprovoked and undeserved.

“What aren’t you telling me?” Eskel demands finally, halfway through another conversation about it, a fortnight before Imbaelk.

Geralt winces, a little guiltily.

Eskel leans in, a hunter scenting weakness on his prey. “There’s something more, isn’t there? Geralt, I swear to you, if there’s something you’re hiding that could’ve given us a way to save you - something you could do that would satisfy the Blight and your stubbornness both - I’ll get a sorcerer to resurrect you just so I can kill you myself. _Tell me.”_

The demand is raw with hurt and desperation, and Geralt can’t deny Eskel, not when he sounds like that. So he draws in as much of a breath as he’s capable of now, closes his eyes against the look of judgment he’s sure Eskel will wear as soon as he hears what Geralt did, and speaks.

He has to pause several times in his narrative, even though it’s not particularly long, to cough and heave and try to clear his throat enough to keep going. Eskel’s jaw is wound tighter and tighter each time Geralt dares to glance at him, though his hands remain unfailingly gentle when he braces Geralt against the spasms, brushing his hair back as he doubles over and struggles for air.

There’s a long and terrible silence when Geralt finishes. He doesn’t dare to break it. At last Eskel takes a slow, deep breath, his scent a very strange admixture of fury, despair, and hope.

“Geralt. When did you say this started?” Eskel’s voice is quiet and tightly controlled.

“About a month after the djinn encounter, when I met Yenn,” Geralt reiterates, confused. They’ve covered this before. What does that have to do with Jaskier?

“Remind me, again, about what led to you seeking Yennefer out that day.”

Geralt squints at Eskel suspiciously, trying to figure out why he’s asking. Eskel gives no hint of anything, and eventually Geralt shrugs a little. “The djinn cursed Jaskier - twisted my wish for peace and attacked his voice. We sought a healer, and the healer told us we needed magical intervention. So I took Jaskier to the nearest mage, and it turned out to be Yennefer.”

“And what if you hadn’t found her? What would have happened to Jaskier’s injury?”

Geralt sucks in a sharp, choked breath. “He would’ve -” He can’t say it, partly because he can’t bring himself to consider that alternative ending to the events of that day, but mostly because his lungs seize around a fresh wave of blossoms and he can’t speak at all.

When it subsides and his vision clears, black spots around the edges from lack of air receding, Eskel leans forward and buries his face in his hands, elbows propped on his knees. Worried and confused, Geralt reaches out and touches the back of one hand. “Esk?”

The other witcher doesn’t lift his head, but speaks directly into his palms, low and muffled. “Geralt, you fucking idiot.”

That was…not the reaction Geralt had been expecting.

After a long moment, he finds his voice. “What?”

“You. Fucking. Idiot.” Eskel says again, drawing each word out, slow and deliberate. He raises his face from his hands and fixes Geralt with a gaze so intense it almost burns. “The Blight isn’t because of your feelings for Yennefer, you utter godsdamned moron. You fool. You’re courting death because you couldn’t fucking figure out who you were in love with. What the _fuck_ , Geralt?”

Geralt simply shakes his head, too confused to say anything.

“That’s why telling Yennefer wasn’t enough,” Eskel continues. “Because it was never about her. Maybe you love her, maybe you don’t - I’m not saying that one way or another. But that’s not the love that was repressed enough to cause you to develop Heart’s Blight."

_Jaskier?_ Geralt's mind reels, suddenly seeing the last twenty-two years in a whole different light. He thinks about the way he allowed the loud, colorful human to make a home for himself in Geralt's life, which was supposed to be silent and dark and above all solitary. He thinks of the liberties he allows Jaskier - the casual touches he stopped swatting away, the incessant questions he occasionally deigns to answer, the food stolen from his plate that he only half-heartedly growls about. He thinks about all the things they share when they travel together, food and coin and baths and beds - and how those same things seem far lonelier when he has them to himself now, in a way that had never bothered him in all the decades before he and Jaskier met.

He remembers how at first he snarled at Jaskier not to follow him on hunts because the human’s presence could be a distraction that got him killed. He can’t remember when he began demanding Jaskier stay behind because he wanted - no, _needed_ the bard to be safe, when he began to fear for Jaskier’s safety and not merely the success of the job.

And then, Rinde. The terror and pain in those crystalline-blue eyes when Jaskier began coughing, and the way Geralt’s heart had dropped when he saw the blood spilling from Jaskier’s lips in place of song. The unbearable trust that rode alongside the fear and pain in Jaskier's eyes, the way Jaskier looked to Geralt for help the way he always did, sure in the knowledge that Geralt would save him. How Geralt had been so caught up in his own horror at Chireadan’s pronouncement that all he’d been able to summon up was an awkward pat on the back and an even more awkward assurance that he wouldn’t let it get that far.

He’d offered Yennefer an open writ when he’d asked her to save Jaskier. _Whatever the price,_ he’d said, even though he knew full well what a damned dangerous game that was to play with anyone, especially mages. But he’d offered it anyway, because nothing she could ask of him would be worse than losing Jaskier. Because there was nothing he wouldn’t willingly give to keep him alive, and healthy, and safe.

And in the years following he’d thought that since the beginning of the Blight coincided with his meeting Yennefer, it had to be for her that he longed so deeply that it could be the death of him. When the constriction grew more pronounced when Jaskier played maudlin love songs, he’d thought it was because they put him in mind of Yenn, even as he’d sat and watched Jaskier so intently he couldn’t tear his gaze away. He’d been grateful for the way Jaskier left when they crossed paths with Yenn, so that Geralt could suffer the worsening Blight afterward alone, never thinking that it might be Jaskier’s absence itself that was the cause. He’d always thought it coincidental that Jaskier came back right as the Blight eased, never making the right connection between the two.

Eskel is right. It had never been about Yenn. No, it was because he’d learned that day that he would do anything Jaskier needed of him, no matter the cost. He’d loved him for years and never quite realized it, but the events of that day had forced his heart to feel it - and he’d immediately distracted himself with Yenn. She was lovely, and dangerous, and all-consuming as a forest fire, and without ever consciously realizing it he’d sought to lose himself in her instead of seeing what was right before his eyes. Because it's safer to love a powerful mage who would outlive him by centuries than to give his heart to an all-too-mortal human man, who might see another couple of decades at his side but no more.

And for that fear he’s squandered even those few decades, Geralt thinks bitterly. He won’t be leaving the keep again. He’ll never have a chance to see Jaskier again, to tell him the truth and release himself from the grip of the Blight.

Besides, if he’d had no right to burden Yenn with his feelings, he has even less right to burden Jaskier so, after their fight that day on the mountain. Geralt still doesn’t know exactly what he’d said, but the tears in Jaskier’s eyes haunt his dreams even now, and by that he knows he must have spoken cruelly indeed.

He drags himself out of his ruminations to see Eskel watching him, careful and patient as he always is, and the magnitude of what he’s done hits him all over again. Geralt had accepted this death as unavoidable, the way it had to be, when he’d thought it was Yenn; but now he’s realizing that if he’d only stopped trying to hold Jaskier at arm’s length, if only he’d paid attention to the emotions he’d spent years ignoring, it wouldn’t have come to this. Wouldn’t have had to. At any point prior to the dragon hunt, if Geralt had just been honest with Jaskier about it - even if Jaskier hadn’t returned his affections, the bard would’ve at least been kind and understanding about it. Geralt is sure of that much.

But he didn’t, and now it’s too late. He can’t impose himself on Jaskier now, after he drove him away so harshly, and it’s a moot point anyway. Jaskier is in Oxenfurt, most likely, hundreds of miles away. There’s nothing to be done now, and with his thick-headed stupidity Geralt has not only condemned himself, but Eskel with him, for it will be Eskel beside him when the Blight finally steals his last breath.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, unable to say anything else. Unable even to think anything else. “I didn’t…Eskel, fuck, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I -”

Eskel reaches for him, and Geralt finds himself wrapped in his familiar embrace. “Hush,” Eskel says, not unkindly. “I know. I know. It’s all right.”

But it isn’t, Geralt knows. It isn’t all right, and there’s nothing he can do to make it all right again.

* * *

“And where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

Eskel doesn’t look up from where he’s buckling the girth of Scorpion’s saddle. “You’re not talking me out of this.”

“He needs you. You’d leave him now, like this? This close to the end?”

At that, Eskel does turn, fixing the older witcher with a hard stare. “I’m leaving because this can’t _be_ the end. There’s a reprieve to be had, but someone has to go get the other half of this equation first. So I’m going to do that. Whether you think it’s the right thing to do or not.”

Vesemir holds his gaze for a long moment, then nods. “Ride hard. His time is measured in days, now.”

Eskel swallows hard. It hurts. “I know. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Take care of him for me.”

* * *

Eskel casts axii more times in his first five minutes in Oxenfurt than he ordinarily does in a year. He doesn’t have time for wary gate guards or those who would refuse him entry to the faculty quarters of the university. Under the influence of the sign everyone is most helpful, immediately pointing him to Professor Pankratz’s quarters. With only a token tap of warning Eskel shoves the door open and strides in, barely remembering to hold onto the door so it doesn’t slam into the wall and break something.

A tall man, somberly dressed, turns to face the abrupt intrusion. His eyes, a blue so pale it’s nearly translucent, scan Eskel head to toe and back again with no sign of fear, and by that Eskel knows this is the bard he’s looking for.

“You must be Eskel,” Jaskier says. “Geralt has told me about you.”

His voice is hoarse and raspy enough to shock Eskel, who expected the smooth tones of a trained singer, and the witcher gives the bard a closer look. Geralt’s given him a good enough description, over the years, but this man only meets it in the vaguest sense. His chestnut hair hangs lank and shaggy, grown out to around chin length; there are dark shadows beneath his eyes and his clothes hang loosely about him, as though he’s lost a great deal of weight recently and not bothered to get his clothing retailored to fit. He’s nigh as pale as Geralt, lips chapped and cracking.

Eskel narrows his eyes and steps closer, taking in Jaskier’s scent. He reeks of sorrow and loneliness and grief, underscored with the floral note of chamomile. “What’s wrong with you?” Eskel demands, at the same moment that Jaskier asks, “What are you doing here?”

“I -” Eskel begins to answer, but Jaskier cuts him off, a sudden look of fear crossing his wan features.

“Is it - is Geralt all right?” Jaskier’s heart begins to pound, faster and faster until it’s thundering in Eskel’s ears, all he can hear.

“No,” Eskel says bluntly, because he doesn’t have time for easing him into it, either. “He’s dying, and I need you to come with me to help save him before it’s too late.”

Jaskier rocks back as if slapped, eyes widening. “He’s - what? No. No, he can’t. He -” The bard cuts himself off abruptly and sucks in a harsh breath. He lifts his chin and sets his jaw, the actions of a man steeling himself for something unpleasant.

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Jaskier says, his voice tightly controlled. “However, when we last spoke, Geralt made it quite clear that he no longer desired my company, and I’m not in the habit of haring off to go tend to someone who is no longer a part of my -”

Before Eskel can say anything, Jaskier chokes off midsentence. He whirls and stumbles over to the desk, bracing his hands against the glossy wood surface as he begins to cough, deep and hacking.

The scent of chamomile intensifies, flooding the air until its cloying scent is all Eskel can smell.

He’s not aware of deciding to move, only of suddenly being across the room, gripping onto Jaskier’s arm and staring down at the small clutch of chamomile flowers spattered with blood that have fallen from his lips to the desk.

“Fuck,” Eskel says, feeling every single day of his 80-some years of life all at once. “You, too?”

Jaskier coughs once more, spits out a stray petal, and lifts his head to meet Eskel’s gaze with a clear effort. “What?”

“That,” Eskel says, pointing at the flowers, “is what’s wrong with Geralt, too. You’re both fucking idiots. Come on. Pack light, we need to move fast.” He pulls the bard away from the desk and toward the bedroom door, trying to get him moving.

“Wait,” Jaskier says, digging in his heels and tugging his arm out of Eskel’s grip. “If…if it’s the Blight that Geralt has, why are you here? I have no idea where Yennefer is, you’d be better off asking Aretuza if anyone there knows where she’s gone.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Eskel growls. “You’re both morons. It’s not her he’s in love with, or at least that’s not where his Blight comes from. It’s you. Now come on, get packed. I’ll explain on the road, but we need to get moving, _now_.”

Jaskier blinks at him as though dazed, but finally starts doing as requested. “I don’t…that can’t be right, Eskel,” he says, even as his hands draw a few sets of smallclothes out of a drawer and roll them up tightly, shoving them in the bottom of a hastily-emptied satchel. Two shirts, a pair of dark wool pants and matching tunic, and a few pairs of stockings follow. “You didn’t hear what he said to me that day, the last time we talked.”

“No,” Eskel agrees, watching Jaskier go to the wardrobe and pull out a heavy traveling cloak and a pair of gloves. It’s spring, but only barely, and it’ll get colder still as they go further north. “But I’ve watched him wasting away all fucking winter, and I saw his face when he finally realized it was you he loved all along. Whatever he said to you that day, it wasn’t out of genuine hate.”

“Why, then?” Jaskier asks. “Why would he say…”

Eskel cuts him off. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what he said, because _he_ doesn’t know what he said - he was half out of his head at the time and lashed out, because that’s how he handles emotions. If we make it back to Kaer Morhen in time, you can ask him yourself.”

“Wait,” Jaskier says, fetching up in front of Eskel with wide, frightened eyes. “What do you mean, if we make it in time?”

“I told you,” Eskel says through gritted teeth, “he’s dying. His Blight is a lot further along than yours. He’s got a week, maybe two left at this point. We’re racing death at this point.”

“Gods,” Jaskier breathes. What little color he has left drains from his face. “All right. Let’s go, then.” Satchel over one shoulder and lute over the other, he leads them from his rooms and toward the stables.

“Do you have a horse?” Eskel asks. “It’ll slow us down considerably to double up on Scorpion, he can’t maintain the kind of pace we need with two grown men on his back.”

Jaskier gives him a flicker of a mischievous grin. “Wait and see, witcher. Wait and see.”

* * *

“Bard, professor…and horse thief,” Eskel says, feeling a laugh bubbling up for the first time in months. “Geralt neglected to mention that.”

Jaskier, astride his stolen gelding, laughs aloud, the sound bright and lovely in the cool early-spring air. “Never let it be said that I am lacking in versatility, dear witcher.”

Eskel glances sidelong at the bard. He can understand how Geralt could have fallen in love with this man, he thinks.

But at the reminder of the other witcher, he sobers, remembering Geralt as he last saw him - wasted half away, eyes fever-bright and voice all but gone - and the moment of levity fades as if it had never been.

He kicks Scorpion on to greater speed, and Jaskier follows without comment.

* * *

“When did yours start?” Eskel asks, letting Jaskier lean on him in the wake of a coughing fit. He hands the bard a waterskin.

“After the dragon hunt,” Jaskier says softly, gazing into their campfire.

Eskel gives him an odd look. “You realized you loved him after that?”

Jaskier laughs bitterly. “No, no. I’ve known I love him for years and years. Pretty much my entire adult life.”

“So…” Eskel says slowly. “Why would the Blight start only then?”

Jaskier gives him a wry, pained little smile. “Because I stopped singing about him after that. For decades I’ve poured my love for him into my songs, gave it an outlet with enough honesty that even though I never said the words to him directly, the Blight never came for me. But after the dragon hunt, I couldn’t bear to sing those songs anymore, and with no outlet…” He presses the tips of his fingers to his chest.

There’s a brief silence. Eskel braces himself for the question he knows is coming next.

“You said his is further along. How long…?”

“Since Rinde,” Eskel says.

Jaskier boggles at him. “Eskel, that was six years ago! How has he had it all this time and no one knew - how has he survived it all this time?”

“As for the first, I don’t know. For the second - witcher resilience, if I had to guess. Probably slowed it considerably.”

“Those winters,” Jaskier murmurs. “He said he got snowed out and couldn’t make it to Kaer Morhen by winter. I invited him to come stay in Oxenfurt with me, and the next year he said he got caught by storms in Poviss. He was avoiding all of us.”

“Yeah,” Eskel agrees.

“I’m going to kick his ass when I see him,” Jaskier mutters, sniffling.

“Yeah,” Eskel says again. “Me, too.”

* * *

Lambert meets them at the gate, takes the reins of both horses, and nods toward the keep. “Still holding on. Not for much longer. Go.”

Eskel and Jaskier share a brief, terrified glance, and as one turn and sprint for the door as though the entire Wild Hunt is at their heels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said it was gonna be 2 parts, but these boys just keep having So Many Feelings that I've gotta expand it to one more part. To be posted tomorrow or the day after, depending on my work schedule.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eskel takes care of his idiots. Jaskier borrows the brain cell when he learns something unexpected. Eventually everyone lives happily ever after.

The crashing sound of the door being flung open barely registers on Geralt’s senses. He’s not aware of much anymore - he’s been vaguely aware of Vesemir, these last couple of days, telling him to hold on a little longer, just a little longer, that Eskel will be back soon. He thinks Lambert might have been there sometimes too, with particularly choice commentary on the idiocy of the situation, though that might’ve just been his own conscience borrowing the best acerbic voice for the job.

His breathing is reduced to shallow, harsh gasps at this point. There’s a dizziness that never quite leaves, sparkling in the darkness behind his closed eyes. He’s stopped coughing up the flowers, which he thinks, distantly, might be a bad sign - that his body has given up on even _trying_ to clear the obstruction from his lungs. Each breath is a torment, and he's getting so little air - he would stop altogether, if he could, but his body keeps trying regardless of his wishes.

There's a hand on his face, suddenly, and the weight of another person settling beside him on the bed. The touch is gentle in a way that makes him think of Eskel, but that can't be right. The calluses are all wrong.

The scent hits him, then, so painfully familiar that it brings tears to his eyes. He knows it can't be real. Jaskier is far away in Oxenfurt where he belongs, safe and happy among his own kind. But Geralt is grateful, so pathetically grateful to his own mind for letting him have this illusion, granting him this tiny comfort here at the end even though he doesn't deserve it in the slightest.

"Geralt?" The hallucination's voice is wavery and oddly rough, with a note of fear in it that tugs at him with the urge to protect him from whatever is causing his fear. "Come on, darling, open your eyes for me, please."

So Geralt does, unable to deny even a dream of Jaskier whatever he asks. He drags eyelids heavier than lead open, blinking to clear his vision.

"Jas?" he whispers, meeting those blue eyes in bewilderment. "Really…here?"

Jaskier smiles a little, though it looks pained. "Yes," he says. "I'm really here. Your Eskel came to Oxenfurt and brought me here."

Geralt isn't tracking particularly well at this point, he's aware enough to know that, but he knows there were things he needed to say.

"Jas," he says again, "'m…sorry. Didn't mean it. Whatever…I said. Shouldn't have. I'm sorry."

He watches tears well in Jaskier’s eyes. Blue, so very blue. He's missed them.

"Oh, love," Jaskier says. "You foolish, noble idiot, to say that first when you've so little time left. You shall be forgiven in an instant, if only you'll say the rest of what needs to be said in order to free yourself of this curse."

The rest? It takes a moment for meaning to coalesce, and when it does he feels a stab of primal fear. The possibility of rejection is a sharper threat now than it was in the abstract of his conversations with Eskel.

But that reminds him that he isn't only doing this for himself, and he pushes the terror aside as best he can as he draws what little breath he has left to speak.

"Jas, it…was never Yenn. Was you all along. I…I love you. Have for years. Didn't know it til…Rinde. The timing…thought it…"

His words are cut off abruptly by the convulsion that seizes him. Careful hands help turn him onto his side, so that the absolute flood of blossoms can fall to the floor and not suffocate him further. He coughs and heaves again and again, wretched and miserable, and the flowers keep coming and coming. Not only flowers: there are leaves and stems, too, and fibrous root clusters slick with blood from where they've been torn out of his flesh.

At last the tide slows, then stops. Geralt sucks in the first full breath he's taken in months, making himself dizzy all over again from a surfeit of oxygen rather than the lack of it. He drops back down onto the bed, feeling almost giddy and suddenly ravenously hungry.

Jaskier's forehead thunks into his sternum hard enough to startle a grunt from him. The bard is half laughing and half crying, hands gripping Geralt's shirt. "You idiot," Jaskier mumbles into Geralt's chest. "You asshole."

Since he's right on both counts there isn't much for Geralt to say in response. Instead he simply brings a hand up to card through Jaskier's hair, unkempt and longer than he's ever seen it. There's a story there, probably. Jaskier will no doubt regale him with it whether he asks or not. For now he simply breathes, reveling in the effortless, unobstructed movement of air in and out in a way he hasn't felt in years.

He looks past Jaskier then and catches Eskel's eye. There's an odd look on his face, but it vanishes as soon as he realizes Geralt is looking at him, and when Geralt reaches for him Eskel doesn't hesitate to come closer and take his hand.

"Thank you," Geralt says softly. "Just…thank you."

Eskel gives him a wry look and squeezes his hand. "Just do me a favor and try not to be this much of an idiot ever again?"

Geralt laughs. He can't remember the last time he laughed. "No promises," he says, "but I'll try."

As though summoned by the laugh, Jaskier gets himself under control and sits up, wiping his eyes unselfconsciously. "You'd better," he tells Geralt.

"I will," Geralt assures him. And then, as he gets his first good look at the bard since they parted in autumn, he frowns. "Jaskier, you look like hell. What happened?"

"Oh, thanks," Jaskier says, pouting dramatically. "Thanks so much. Look like hell, do I? Flatterer."

"Bard." The warning growl rumbles out from two chests, rather than just one. Jaskier blinks and looks back and forth between them.

"Well," he says eventually. _"That's_ an experience. Goodness."

"Jaskier," Eskel says, "Come on. Just get it over with."

Geralt looks back and forth between the two, baffled. "Get what over with?" he asks.

"Well forgive me for having some trepidation about this whole process," Jaskier says, gesturing at Geralt even as he utterly ignores the question. "That looked extremely uncomfortable."

"It'll only be worse the longer you put it off," Eskel points out, ever the reasonable one.

"Fine." Jaskier turns to Geralt, then, and says, "Please don't be alarmed, my heart."

"What -?" Geralt begins to ask. Being told not to be alarmed is in and of itself pretty fucking alarming, and he starts to push himself up, ready to demand that at least one of the two of them start making sense.

But before he can get anywhere with that plan, Jaskier says, "I'm sure you've figured this out by now, but to be clear, Geralt - I love you, too."

Well, it's nice to hear it said so plainly, but it seems like something of a non-sequitur at this point in the conversation, Geralt thinks.

It clicks into place a moment later, when Jaskier sucks in a ragged breath and starts to cough, expelling his own pile of blooms. It's over much quicker, thankfully, and with far less blood, and after only a few moments Jaskier sits back, gulping air.

"Ugh," he says with feeling. "I was right, that was extremely uncomfortable."

Geralt is still reeling from seeing Jaskier suffering the same affliction over him. "You…" he says, trying to make words line up in the right order to come out in sentences. "But…you…how? When?" Not exactly sentences, but they'll do.

Jaskier's lips twist a little bitterly and he looks down, refusing to meet Geralt's eyes. "After the mountain," he says quietly. "I've always poured my love for you into my music, but after that day I couldn't bear to sing of you any longer. With nowhere to go…" The bard's elegant fingers flick toward the little mound of flowers.

The revelation goes through him like an arrow. "I nearly got us both killed, didn't I?" Geralt says. It isn't really a question.

Jaskier only shrugs. "But you didn't," he says. "We're both here, both cured of it. That's all that matters, right?"

Geralt looks back at Eskel. "Only thanks to you," he says. "Esk…I owe you for both our lives. More than I could ever hope to repay. Thank you."

Eskel shrugs. There's an odd quirk to his mouth as he says, "Just…just be good to each other. Make it worth it. That's all I ask."

"We will," he promises, meeting Jaskier's eyes. "We will."

And then Jaskier leans in and kisses him, soft and sweet, and Geralt finds his senses entirely overwhelmed by the rightness of it. He falls into the kiss, curling a hand around the back of Jaskier's neck, sighing at the brush of Jaskier's fingers through his hair.

He doesn't notice when Eskel closes the door behind him.

* * *

"Chamomile, Jask? Really?" The slant of Geralt's mouth is affectionate as he says it, though.

"It has fond associations for me," Jaskier says loftily.

"It gave you an excuse to touch my ass."

"Which was a lovely experience that I remember quite fondly, thank you."

"Only you, Jaskier," Geralt says, but he's laughing as he says it and hands back the sole remaining flower. The others had crumbled to dust shortly after being coughed out, but one had remained, complete with a root system, and Jaskier decided this meant it ought to be planted and kept.

Jaskier gently places the little plant in the hollow he scooped out of the dirt in the planter box, smoothing the dirt back in around it to hold it upright. He turns and holds out a hand expectantly for the last flower of Geralt's.

Geralt spins it in his fingers for a moment, contemplating it. "Yours at least makes sense," he admits. "I don't even recognize this."

"Pasqueflower," Jaskier says softly, one fingertip tracing the fuzzy outline of the bell-shaped flower. "Native to Kerack, but only in the mountains. There was a meadow of them near my family's home. I used to go there growing up, sneak off to sit and write or daydream about escaping one day." He sets the flower in the dirt beside the chamomile and covers its roots as well, then sits back and dusts his hands off. "There."

He slants a sideways look at Geralt. "Actually, perhaps that means you're to blame for the chamomile, my dear. It certainly wasn't _your_ associations with pasqueflower that made the Blight manifest it to represent me. Which would mean the Blight manifested as chamomile for me because it meant something to _you_."

Geralt thanks all the gods he doesn't believe in for the mutations that keep him from being able to blush, else his face would be absolutely scarlet at that.

Jaskier, of course, knows him well enough to guess at that anyway. He leans in, grinning. "So clearly, me laying hands on that lovely bottom is a rather fond memory for you, as well."

The reflex to deny, deflect, push away wells up almost overwhelmingly. But Geralt knows, now, that it was that impulse that nearly wound up killing them both, and has resolved to learn to be better about it. So instead he takes a careful, deep breath, calming the riotous thing in his chest that demands a retreat into the safety of loneliness, and instead says a little stiffly, "Yeah. It was the first time I had allowed someone to do something to care for me when it wasn't strictly necessary. I could have applied the chamomile myself. Any other time, I would have. But I…let you do it, instead. I hadn't done that since before the Trials."

The way Jaskier's face softens at hearing that, sky-bright eyes shining with open adoration, makes the awkwardness of talking about this shit worth it.

The kiss that follows certainly doesn't hurt, either.

* * *

"You're leaving?" Geralt keeps his voice carefully neutral as he leans against the doorway and watches Eskel pack for his departure. Eskel's done so fucking much for him, he doesn't have the right to ask for more, even if the thought of parting now burns like direct sunlight to the eyes after taking Cat.

"It's spring," Eskel points out. "Time to return to the Path." His voice, too, is studiously neutral.

Geralt feels a pang of loneliness at the sudden space between them. He's not even sure why it's happening - maybe Eskel is angrier with Geralt's stubbornness nearly getting him killed than he'd let on. Or is it Jaskier? Is he expecting things to change between them now that Geralt has Jaskier?

He wants to reassure Eskel - _You know I still love you, right? Jaskier isn't the type to need me to choose between you._ \- but he can't get his tongue around the words. Finally he gives up and simply goes to him, dragging the other witcher into a tight embrace.

"Be careful out there," he says, resting his forehead against Eskel's. "I'll see you next winter." But there's a question under the familiar words that goes unanswered, and though Eskel's arms are firm around him he eases back when Geralt would have closed the distance between them for a kiss.

"See you next winter," Eskel agrees, turning away to finish packing his gear.

The door closes behind Geralt with a soft click as he leaves. He can't help but think it sounds like the first piece of gravel in the kind of landslide that can level a mountain.

* * *

Jaskier hadn't meant to intrude. But Geralt had come back from Eskel's room in rare form, withdrawn and silent even by Geralt standards, which was half impressive and half terrifying.

And, after all, Jaskier owes Eskel a great deal as well. His own life, and Geralt's, and this new thing between them. So of course he'd want to bid the man farewell before he left. It has nothing to do with intending to corner him and, witcher or no, _shake_ an explanation out of him, by force if necessary.

He shoves the door open unceremoniously, the beginning of a blistering demand for answers on his tongue, and comes to an abrupt halt half a step into the room.

A wry look twists the scarred features as Eskel finally straightens up from where he'd been bent double, a handful of stalks lined with small, dark red flowers scattered at his feet. He doesn't say anything, having learned by now that Jaskier, unlike Geralt, is both able and willing to fill a given silence when there's something to be said.

But the expected dramatics don't come. Jaskier simply gives him a level look and says evenly, "You had some awfully choice words for the both of us on this topic, as I recall. Not going to take your own advice?"

The quiet censure hits harder than a diatribe would have. Eskel winces a little, then shakes his head. "No."

"Why not?"

Eskel cuts a sharp glance at the bard, alert for any hint of pity in the soft voice. What he sees is not pity, but a deep sort of understanding that's almost harder to bear.

But he decides that if any human could understand, it would be this one, and chooses to give him the courtesy of unvarnished honesty. "There's so little love in a witcher's life. He's found that with you. If I told him, it might change things, might come between you. I won't do that to him."

Jaskier blinks. "Melitele save me from noble-hearted witchers and their self-sacrificing tendencies," he mutters, then adds, "The heart is not bound to love one alone, you know."

Eskel gives a half-shrug. "No," he acknowledges, "but Geralt…" He trails off, lips twisting in wry self-deprecation. "What we have, it's good, and I know he cares, but he doesn't love me. Not like he loves you."

It would almost be comical, the look on Jaskier's face, if the subject weren't so serious. As it is, Eskel still feels a vague tickle of amusement at it.

"Oh, for the love of every extant god and half a dozen more that haven't been invented yet," Jaskier says despairingly. He scrubs a hand over his face, takes a deep breath, lets it out in a sharp huff, and fixes Eskel with a gaze that really shouldn't be all that intimidating coming from a human.

Eskel doesn't quite dare move, nonetheless.

"First of all," he says crisply, "Even one who loves two people will never love them quite exactly the same way, so get that through your thick skull. They're different people, and you love them each in their own way. He doesn't have to love you exactly as he loves me for it to be love.”

Eskel opens his mouth. Closes it again.

Jaskier doesn’t wait for him to get his thoughts in order. “Secondly, even _if_ we take it on faith that he cares for you but doesn’t love you, go ahead and take a moment to imagine what Geralt ‘Everything is my fault and my burden, yes, even that too’ of Rivia would do with the knowledge that you’d _died_ because you didn’t want to risk your honesty causing problems for us. Just. Just take a moment and think about the outcome of that.” Any hint of levity is utterly gone from the bard’s voice, replaced by a cold sort of protective fury, sharp enough to leave even a witcher bleeding.

But that, at least, Eskel does have an answer for. “That’s why I was leaving,” he says, trying to keep the defensive note out of his voice and not entirely succeeding. “No one would have known that’s what killed me. I’d have just become one more witcher fallen on the Path. Just another tally in the count.”

A soft, wounded sort of sound escapes Jaskier’s lips at that, at the simple, bare acceptance of it. _Yeah, when they slow and get killed,_ he hears in his memory, and it cuts as deeply now as it did then.

He’s not aware of moving, only of a sharp pang in his chest and then he’s across the room, taking Eskel’s scarred face in his hands. “No,” he says forcefully. “Absolutely not.” And he leans in and kisses him.

Eskel jerks beneath his hands as though Jaskier had struck him, not kissed him, but doesn’t pull away. When Jaskier draws back he’s met by a wide-eyed stare, pupils all but eclipsing the rich yellow of his irises.

Jaskier gives him a wry little smile. “Sorry,” he says, without particularly sounding like it (or meaning it). “That was perhaps a little forward even by my standards. But Eskel, I can’t bear to hear you be so careless about your own life. I…” He trails off for a moment, then laughs a little. “Ask Geralt, sometime, about my habit of falling into all the wrong beds. It’s been…a lot, over the years. But what no one ever really understands is that I’m not - it’s not careless or cavalier, not really. I just love easily. I always have. Sometimes only for a night, sometimes for weeks or months. Once, for twenty-two years and counting.” He shakes his head. “I may not have decades of knowing you, but I know that you were willing to ride hell-for-leather halfway across the continent and back to try to save someone you love. I know you were kind to me in the midst of my own affliction, too. And it's only taken a couple of weeks for me to recognize that you are perhaps the only other person I've known who is _good_ , down to the core of you, the same way Geralt is."

That, Eskel can't just let stand. He shakes his head, though only a little, not enough to dislodge Jaskier's hands against his face. "Not…not the same way. He's always been a far better man than I am."

Jaskier lets out a single sharp bark of laughter, then smooths the tips of his fingers over Eskel's scars. "Oh, the pair of you," he says fondly. "Do you know, he said exactly the same thing about you?"

Eskel blinks. He did?

"Look," Jaskier says, "I don't know what there could be between us, if you'd even be interested at all, but -"

"When you stole the horse," Eskel blurts out. "I - you laughed, and I thought to myself that I could see why Geralt had fallen in love with you."

"So horse-thievery is the way to your heart?" That bright laugh rings out for a moment and Eskel can't help the smile that tugs at the corner of his lips to know that he caused it. "I'll have to remember that," Jaskier says, eyes glittering with good humor, then sobers. "Anyway, I was going to say…whatever there is or isn't or might come to be between you and I, I know that there is another witcher in this keep who is at this very moment sulking in his room because he thinks you don't want him anymore, and he deserves to hear the truth from you - and you, Eskel, you deserve better than a lonely death and to become just, just another tally in the count."

"I'm not sulking."

Eskel yanks away from Jaskier and spins to face the doorway where Geralt is leaning, arms crossed over his chest and an admittedly rather sulky-looking scowl on his face. His face heats as he meets Geralt's eyes, feeling cornered and caught out, no matter what Jaskier said about not loving one alone. "I…"

"You absolutely are sulking, my dear," Jaskier says, but it sounds affectionate rather than chiding.

Geralt doesn't answer, doesn't take his eyes off Eskel's face. He pushes away from the door frame and comes closer, slowly, his gait somewhere between tentative and predatory. Eskel watches his approach, noting the traces of unsteadiness, the weakness borne of months of starvation that hasn't fully gone away yet, and when a tremor strong enough to make him stumble hits Eskel is already there to steady him, as he always is. As he always will be, and _fuck_ , why did he think he could ever actually walk away from this?

"I know I - was stupid," Geralt says, leaning into Eskel's side, "and you're angry. You have every right to be, I'm not - if it's that, if you don't want to still be…this," with a slightly awkward gesture between them, "because of how badly I fucked up, I get it, I won't ask for anything more from you. Just - just don't push me away because you think you _should_. Because of Jaskier. I -"

He's…babbling, Eskel realizes, charmed to the bones by it. This is what nervous babbling sounds like, coming from the world's least talkative man.

So he stops it with a kiss, tasting the worried words as he steals them away. "Of course I still want you, idiot," he mumbles against Geralt's lips, and then without thinking adds, "I love you."

In the next instant Eskel is forced to twist away to cough, harsh spasms shaking his chest, rattling loose the stalks of blossoms down to their roots. Dimly he’s aware of two pairs of hands on him, steadying him; Geralt is saying something to one side of him, sounding shocked, and Jaskier's lighter voice replies from his other side, but Eskel can't spare the attention to parse out words and meaning.

The fit isn't as violent as Geralt's was, but it's nearly as long, clearing out decades of unspoken yearning. When at last it subsides one of the others pressed a cup of water into his hand and he sips at it slowly, staving off the moment when he'll have to face Geralt and see whatever's written on the oh-so-familiar features.

But the water only lasts so long, and Eskel may be many things but he's not a coward. With a slow, deep breath he straightens and meets Geralt's eyes, bracing for the rejection he still more than half expects to find.

It isn't there. Rings of gold frame blown-wide black pupils, and while he looks shocked, he doesn't look like he _minds_ the revelation exactly. “I…” Geralt begins, trails off for a moment, then tries again. “Red-flowered melilote,” he marvels, letting his eyes drop to the pile of blooms at their feet, and Eskel can’t help but remember the meadow where they’d found the uniquely-colored variant of the common melilote, the way Geralt’s eyes had shone when they tumbled down amid the flowers together. He drags himself back to the present in time to hear Geralt stammer out, “Eskel, how - why?”

That was…perhaps not quite the reaction he’d expected. Eskel gives the other witcher a crooked smile. “Is it that unthinkable that I could love you?”

“No,” Geralt says, shaking his head. “Not that. Why - why the Blight? I thought it was only love _suppressed_ that caused that.” He glances down at the pile of flowers and adds, “And that’s not early stages of it. That’s - how long have you had it?”

“It _was_ suppressed, Geralt. For most of our lives, at least partly. It was never so bad during the winter, I guess because I got to show it somewhat then even without the words, but during the year…”

“But we’ve been -” Geralt makes that awkward gesture between them again. “Together. The whole time. I don’t understand.”

Eskel huffs sharply, frustrated at having to spell it out like this. “In bed, yeah, but not - I wanted more, but you didn’t, so I -” He breaks off abruptly at the sudden look of hurt that gets him.

They stare at each other as Eskel slowly realizes just how stupid he’s been. At least as stupid as the other two. Maybe more. “Fuck,” he says, quietly but with feeling.

“I didn’t think it needed to be said,” Geralt says. “I’m sorry. I thought -” he shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. Eskel, I've never said it and I'm - I'm sorry for that, but you - I've loved you my entire fucking life.”

Eskel sucks in a harsh, shuddering breath, feeling some ancient, deeply-buried grief crack apart and fall to dust inside his chest at the words. Helplessly, hands moving not of his own volition, he pulls Geralt back in until there's not a hint of daylight between their bodies and claims his lips in another kiss, fierce and desperate.

And Geralt, bless and damn him, seems to know exactly what Eskel needs. He offers himself up, pliant and yielding, for Eskel to take what he wants, and Eskel can _taste_ the love and trust in it so clearly he wonders how he could ever have missed it before.

"Mine," he rumbles, even as he frees one hand and reaches for where he can hear Jaskier's heartbeat and smell his joy - no sourness of jealousy at all, only happiness, clean and bright. Jaskier accepts the hand and lets himself be reeled in until he's pressed close against both witchers' sides, one hand rising to card through Geralt's hair, the other resting warmly against the small of Eskel's back.

Eskel relinquishes his claim to Geralt's mouth and watches as Jaskier pulls him in and kisses him in turn, not as desperately but with just as much love. "Ours," he corrects himself, all but tasting the spike of elation and love the word produces in both of the others, hearing the low, satisfied purr Geralt gives at it, at being claimed so.

When they break apart Geralt looks between the other two with liquid-dark eyes. "Yours," he agrees, but his gaze keeps dancing back and forth between them like he's searching for something. Feeling a second pair of eyes on him as well, Eskel turns and meets Jaskier's sky-blue gaze and hopeful smile.

Feeling unaccountably nervous, Eskel drops his gaze to Jaskier's full lips for a moment before tearing his eyes away. "Are…are you sure?" he asks, unable to let himself fully believe that any human, but especially one so bright and lovely, could truly want him like that. And if it's just to be a, a pity fuck or including him only for Geralt’s sake then he'd really rather not -

Geralt makes a low, displeased sound at the same moment Jaskier's hand leaves Geralt's hair to cup the scarred side of Eskel's face. "Hey," the human says, voice firm despite the gentleness of his touch and the compassion in his eyes. "None of that, now."

Eskel scowls, feeling caught out. He knows it twists the scars further, makes his visage even more monstrous to behold, but Jaskier doesn't flinch - doesn't even seem to notice. It's fucking intoxicating and terrifying all at once, having a human look at him without regard for the monster within, the creature he's been made to become; having a human simply look at him as one man might look at another, especially another who catches his amorous interest. He hardly knows what to do with it.

"If you've changed your mind, or realized you aren't as interested as you thought, or just aren't ready for anything to happen between us yet, it's all right," Jaskier assures him, thumb tracing the notch in Eskel's upper lip where the scar crosses it. "I won't ask for anything you don't wholly, eagerly, and enthusiastically wish to give. And I promise you, nothing you decide with regards to me will change things for either of us where Geralt is concerned." The witcher in question confirms it with a nod even as Jaskier continues, a faint shadow crossing his lovely features. "I couldn't bear it if you only let me in because you thought you had to in order to have him, if you thought it was both or neither of us. But if you're asking for my sake, if you're uncertain of my interest…" A wicked little smile plays about Jaskier's lips. "You're a beautiful man - hush, you are - with a beautiful heart to match, and I'm halfway to in love with you already. Plus, I may literally cry if I have to go the rest of my life without knowing what it feels like to come apart on your cock."

A startled snort of laughter escapes him. From the corner of his eye he can see Geralt grinning as well - grinning in a way he's rarely done since they were boys, before the Grasses changed everything - and then that, too, vanishes from his mind as his senses narrow to the human before him. Jaskier’s smile doesn’t waver, his regard sweet and delighted and hopeful and steady all at once, warm as summer rain. _I can have this,_ Eskel thinks, marveling at it. He can have this, like a gift from the universe itself: Geralt, who he’s always loved and who has apparently always loved him in turn, and also the affection - and perhaps, someday, love - of a human dazzling enough to be sunlight given human form, who can look at a pair of scarred and broken witchers without flinching and see not monsters, but only men, as worthy of love as any other.

He curls an arm around Jaskier’s waist and kisses him.

Behind them, a pile of flowers crumbles to dust, unnoticed.

* * *

“Ah, now, Eskel,” Jaskier says, “You know my old bones can’t handle such hard work anymore.”

But the bard is laughing as he says it, and on the other side of him Geralt snorts as well. Eskel lets his eyes fall on the little bed of flowers that sits tucked into the corner of the keep’s main courtyard, sheltered by the bulk of the keep. A fuzzy purple pasqueflower, a cluster of cheerful yellow-and-white chamomile flowers, and a single tall stalk of red-flowered melilote bloom together despite the season, ever-bright even in the depths of winter, held by some unknown magic for over a hundred years so far.

Sometimes Eskel wonders how long it can last, if there will come a day when the magic fades and fails and Jaskier’s human mortality reasserts its claim. Or what will happen to the magic if one of the two witchers should fall to some beast, or to a mob of men.

But for now, there’s Geralt, pale hair gleaming in the weak winter sun, and Jaskier’s wild, laughing yelp as he’s snatched up and carried off to the stables for the aforementioned hard work, and Eskel has everything he could never have imagined for himself.

With a quick grin at the trio of magical flowers, Eskel turns and follows his loves, content to take what he’s granted, for as long as he has it.

It’s enough. It’s more than enough. It’s…everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this was everything you wanted from your gift fic, Nova! Despite the slightly late conclusion. Happy New Year, loves - here's to 2021 being at least 5% less awful.

**Author's Note:**

> Stay tuned for the appearance of the brain cell, currently in Eskel's custody, and idiots struggling to figure out their own emotions.


End file.
